Now With More Me

Monday, January 25, 2010

Got a phone call just as I walked in. I hate the soul-sucking process of retrieving voice mail messages, so I rushed to get it. Today's first project: verifying the usage statistics. We saw a dramatic drop in full text article requests. Turns out it's easy to explain; we lost access to Wilson Select FT once the Illinois Library couldn't afford to subsidize it anymore.

Took a peek at this week's calendar. Not bad. Vacation day Friday!

68 unread email messages. Sometimes I'm amazed I get anything done at all when this is a typical morning inbox.

Friday, July 31, 2009

Attended our weekly anthropology grant team meeting. I'm the PI for our campus, but our wonderful anthropologist does so much of the heavy lifting. She's so organized, and we couldn't handle this project without her.

Made a single pile from all the paper on my desk. I will not leave until it's *poof* gone.

Updated our database A-Z list to reflect the change from CCH Tax Research Network to IntelliConnect.

Added corresponding listing to our EZProxy config file and sent the link to our business librarian for testing and review.

Selected 3 SAGE Publication books for my contribution to the recently published Encyclopedia of Health Services Research. I received a $100 book credit for my efforts.

Read a bit about TechQual+ -- a survey along the lines of LibQual+, but for campus IT departments. Sent the information to the other members of the Faculty Council on Technology.

Spent some time just browsing in the stacks. No particular goals, just a way to get familiar with our collection.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

So it started last night with the library printers being down. Apparently our 1st floor had network issues. Catalog has been up, down, up, down the whole week. Should make an interesting day.

Set myself up in the lower level for today's user tests. The 1st floor network was flaking out for some reason, so we had to relocate.

Answered my first virtual reference question from the neiulibrary queue using LibraryH3lp. Worked great, though since she addressed me by my first name, I figured it was a librarian at the desk. Turned out, no, it was an actual patron.

Waited and waited for the student to show up for the first user test. No go. Not even the $100 incentive was enough to remind him. I did send an email reminder 2 days ago.

Monitored the Handheld Librarian conference on Twitter, via the hashtag #hhlib. Turned out that people posted a link to allow conference access. Checked out @theanalogdivide's presentation on Building a Mobile Library Platform

Continued working on our WebVoyage CSS customization.

Email, email, email.

Spoke with our rep and the Journal of Visualized Experiments. We're going to subscribe.

Emailed her our IP address ranges and requested any special EZProxy config information.

Rescheduled the Altarama demo for next week. That freed up tomorrow afternoon for me. Nice on a Friday.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Wednesdays are my late day, meaning I arrive around noon and work the ref desk into the early evening. This gives me time in the morning to work on my hobby or run errands. It's sweet.

Attended a brown bag co-viewing of a student participant's interview in the anthro grant project.

Read all my non-listserv email

Observed another WorldCat Local user session taking place down in Springfield. This was a very savvy user. Had never used WCL but navigated nearly every task easily.

Put off filling out individual paper slips for a few old medical books that should have been weeded long ago. Our weeding process is so tedious. I'll take care of them while I'm at the ref desk later and can look each up one by one like I'm expected to do. Ugh.

Planned to attend a 2 pm reference meeting, but since the reference coordinator and the information services AUL are out today, we didn't have it.

Picked up late lunch and brought it back to the office. It has to hold me until early evening when I can go home. Just missed the cafeteria--closes at 2 pm in the summer.

Opened and printed a document delivery request article. Nice quality.

Read the rest of my Outlook email, scanned Gmail.

Started editing the CSS file for our new WebVoyage installation. I like Firebug but haven't quite figured out how to use it best. It doesn't help that there are 6+ CSS files involved.

Worked my weekly 3-hour shift at the reference desk. This involved:

Keying in the past 2 weeks of Meebo IM stats from a paper tally sheet to our SurveyMonkey stat file

Pulling all the rest of the old NCI Monographs off the shelves for discard as well as some other old books in ref. The Essential Guide to Prescription Drugs is less so when it was published in 1993.

Discovering both printing stations on the first floor are down as well as the other public ones in the library. That's always fun. One student sent a bunch of jobs before seeing the signs. I felt so bad for her. All that research gone.

Diving in to Instant Messaging Reference: A Practical Guide by R. Bridgewater and M. B. Cole. Specifically chapter 8, with info on LibraryH3lp. I'm charged with our transition to this service.

Test driving LibraryH3lp, including setting up our queues and substituting our Meebo chat widgets with LibraryH3lp ones on our website and in our LibGuides. Tomorrow: our Facebook page. Should be seamless to the librarians who staff the service.

Assembled a bookstore tapas lunch. Half of the stations in our cafeteria are closed in the summer, making for a pretty boring menu. Sometimes I have to get creative.

Ate at my desk. This is typical--not in a woe-is-me way. When I'm at work, I'm here to work. I save my downtime for the evening.

Continued to evaluate LIF journal fund for possible cuts. Considering things like biology thesis citations, SFX requests in the past year. Still very difficult.

Compared my LIF list to the list of native PDFs available from a potential document delivery provider.

Observed a WCL user test with a student at UIS. UserVue is pretty cool.

Posted a tweet from our library account about our catalog being down. Turned on SMS notification from @CARLIoffice so I'll be notified and can post when it's back up even though I'm leaving the office soon.

Packed up a little work for home after my doctor appointment.

Late afternooon update:

Ordered a few more articles to try out a potential document delivery system for ordering articles from low-use journals we have to cut.